Asustek aims to rank among top-10 global NB brands

Taipei, Dec. 24, 2003 (CENS)--With strong efforts to boost sales of own-brand notebook computers, Asustek Computer Inc. will challenge the world's top-10 notebook computer brands next year.

The goal will make Austek the second Chinese brand, behind Acer, to squeeze into the list of the world's top-10 NB brands. But Austek will have to face a dilemma between own brand and contract manufacturing business in advance.

Austek said it would ship 1.8 million up to 2 million NBs, 500,000 up to 600,000 of which will bear own brands and the remaining 1.2 million up to 1.3 million NBs will be produced on an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) basis.

The company recently set a goal to ship 800,000 up to one million own-brand NBs and two million up to 2.2 million OEM NBs next year. At present, the company's major contract clients include Apple Computer, Sony Corp., Samsung Electronics Corp., Epson Corp. and some NB distributors in the U.S. and Europe.

According to statistics compiled by the well-known market researcher International Data Corp., the world's top-10 brands include Hewlett Packard, Dell Computer, Toshiba, IBM, Fijitsu Siemens, Acer, NEC, Sony, Apple, and Gateway. Of them, HP tops others to ship 6.6 million NBs while Gateway ranks 10th with the expected shipment of 600,000 NBs this year.

Based on the IDC statistics, Asustek will have great chance to squeeze out Gateway as the world's No.10 brand if it can reach the goal of shipping 800,000 own-brand NBs next year.

With intensive publicity campaigns since the beginning of this year, Austek NB brand has been recognized as the No.1 NB brand in Taiwan. Seeing the successful promotion of own-brand NBs, the company has resolved to funnel huge money to develop the Asia-Pacific and European markets. The company boasted it has scored brilliant sales performance in Russia and Singapore this year and the outstanding sales will continue next year.

Thanks to the promotion of a 'Giant Lion' strategy, Austek has seen outstanding sales performance in computer motherboards, NBs, game consoles, and optical disk drives so far this year.

The company recently set a goal to hit NT$300 billion (US$8.82 million at US$1:NT$34) in sales in 2004 by shipping 40 million motherboards and three million NBs.